Webinars continue to be an important way companies connect to customers for education, marketing, sales, and customer support purposes. Yet most companies relegate these tasks to junior staff at the last minute, forgetting a key number of crucial steps and increase risk. While tools like Cisco’s Webex, GoToMeeting, Adobe Connect, and Microsoft LiveMeeting and Slideshare Zipcast, (Or Virtual events with On24, INXPO, Unisfair ) offer a variety of technologies, they don’t provide a strategy or a comprehensive checklist on the many components needed.

Detailed Guide for Download: How To Successfully Produce A Professional Grade Webinar, Webcast, or Teleconference

Download this excel sheet from slideshare by clicking on the embed below.

Review with your team, then assign team members and dates

Place this document in a central location so all team members can see, and conduct regular meetings to complete checklist

If you’re in the marketing or sales arena, the 9th P is crucial. Remember, once the event ends, your job is just starting and you must focus on “Pursuit” for sales followups, don’t just throw a lead least over the transom to sales.

The web is quickly moving to real-time, people share the information about what they’re doing while their doing it. Yet the next step beyond real time, is future-looking data, which is called the Intention Web (get up to speed by reading this post). In an effort to map out this trend in 2010, let’s list out the vendors, companies, and beyond that will facilitate this type of forward looking data.

There are countless opportunities for people to connect with others with the same goals, or for companies that want to serve them as new technologies like Social CRM evolve and develop. Scope: These Intention websites facilitate a person to publish their future goals in the context of their community, or sometimes even in public. For example, an unshared CAL isn’t a qualifier.

To The Future! A List of Intention Enabled Websites

43 Things: This “wish list”, they suggest that you make a list on 43 Things and see what changes happen in your life. They encourage you to connect with others with the same goals.

Facebook Events: Facebook allows members to RSVP for future events, publish their own events, or see what friends are doing.

Above, thanks to Mitch Canter, we’ve a new header graphic for the “On The Move” series, which needed an update since I started this digest a few years ago.

In an effort to recognize the changes in the social media space, I’ve started this post series (see archives) to both track and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks:

My former colleague Alexis Karlin who was very involved with Forrester’s social media efforts now joins Neolane, and will be starting their social strategy from scratch and running their web site. She’s quite the professional, an incredibly fast learner, and I’m glad to have worked with her. Follow her on Twitter at @akarlin.

David Armano moves on from Dachis Group and joins Edelman Digital as a SVP. Regardless of where David works, his blog is a fantastic collection of thoughts, informative graphics, and insight, I’ll follow his insights anywhere, find him @armano It’s interesting to see how Edelman is placing bets in social strategy, with that in mind, also see that…

Hiring? Leave a comment
If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, please)

Experimenting With Mobile Apps
It’s clear that content can become more contextual and personalized as it transects with location based devices. A few weeks ago the folks at the company MotherApp, created a “Web Strategy iPhone App (download in iTunes)” to take on the go. This isn’t just a “m.” mobile website that shows essential content minus heavy graphics, this is a true iPhone app, with the native interface of Apple products, see screenshots below. I’m not the only one, they created the app for Tim Ferris (iTunes), Guy Kawasaki (iTunes) and Brian Solis (iTunes) and others.

Mobile Based Apps Offer Content On The Go
The content can be accessed on an iPhone, even if there’s no internet connection, the content is downloaded. Secondly the content is in a clean Apple native user interface making it easier to read and navigate, rather than some clunky “m” looking site. Also, you can serve up a variety of content sources related to your brand. Also, the app has location based content, I’m looking at Brian’s app, and it can serve up Fan comments based on location (it asks you for your current location, first). In the future, it would be interesting if two fans of Brian Solis’s app would be signaled to each other they are in proximity, resulting in unique engagements. Brian’s app links directly to his amazon page, where his books (products) are available for sale.

Brian Solis’s Apps Requests To Access Your Location

Brian Solis’s Apps Filters Fan Wall Shout Outs By Proximity.

Conversion: Brian Solis’s App Promotes His Books, With Links to his Amazon Store.

What’s the downside? The URLs and comments are visible, only my voice. In the future, I’m sure these will be native into the app, so the community can talk back. The barriers to entry are still high, you’ll need to find an app developer to build this for your iPhone or other mobile device.

Apps for Events and Corporate Conferences
It’s not just personal brands, I recently noticed the Forrester Consumer Forum iPhone app that listed out the schedule, top topics “What’s hot” based on attendee votes (I think) and the ability to create a schedule of tracks to attend. LeWeb has the most impressive event iPhone application, with links to previous videos, session list, news, maps, and speaker roster. Nearly the entire event website was ported to the device on the go.

Expect majority of top blogs to have mobile apps within the next few months, at first they will be custom created, then a platform will emerge allowing them to quickly ported to multiple platforms (blackberry, droid, etc).

This platform will emerge that will create this blog network, and new advertising opportunities will emerge who are able to cascade the information to the mobile devices. Players like Federated Media, Blogher, should move quickly.

Content will become location-based, as blog posts, tweets, and other content is based on a specific area (a foodie blog, reviewing restaurants in Mission district, SF) the content will auto-surface to the application when needed.

A standard will be set for all conferences and events to have a mobile based event that encourages members to find out about sessions, find other attendees, and even tweet from it.

I’ll continue to experiment with the Web Strategy brand in a variety of mediums, to test, and report back to you what works and what doesn’t.

Blogging conferences in the US were popular a few years ago –and have given way to Facebook conferences, and now Twitter or last week’s “Real Time” focus at LeWeb. The Middle East has been evolving quickly in the blogosphere, and this is a real focus for individuals, organizations, institutions, and governments to connect with others, and let their voice to be heard.m Embedded above, you’ll find my presentation, which has international examples of bloggers. It has a section with data (sourced cited) and then I talk about where I see blogging headed into the next era. The purpose of this event is to educate local bloggers on how to most effectively use blogging tools to connect and reach to the outside world, so I’ll give a hand, and try to connect the community right here on this blog.

Arabic Bloggers, Kindly Leave A Comment
In the spirit of community, in this case, global community, at the end of my keynote, I’m suggesting that the attendees leave a comment on this post, to shout out to the world, leave a URL, and a few sentences on what they focus on.

Web Strategy Community, Please Welcome Them
My hope is that these Arabic bloggers will not only connect with each other, but also connect with my readers in the business world. If you’re a regular reader of the Web Strategy blog –please welcome them, surf their blogs, and share about yourself if you’ve similar interests. We recently installed Disqus so we have threaded conversations –making it easier to keep track of multiple discussions. Be sure to return to this post in the future, in order to see how the conversation developers over time.

To me, success for this project is to see at least two people connecting with each other in which they can develop a meaningful relationship for understanding, business, or friendship. Blogs, a simple technology, that can bridge people around the world.

I’m about to present at LeWeb, Europe’s largest internet conference with this year’s focus on “Real Time”. With information moving even quicker, there’s a new strategy needed for companies to adopt. Since the accompanying slides are best used with narration, here’s the gist of my presentation:

Real time data is exploding at a rapid pace with the influx of status features and mobile devices. This brings new opportunities for people to get information when they need it and opportunities and the companies that want to provide contextual information. Yet, despite the opportunities, most companies are unable to keep up with the “Slow time” web as it is. In fact, those that can’t keep up risk missing opportunities, or worse –heading off detractors before they become mainstream. To best leverage real time data, companies must adopt three strategies: 1) Start listening now, and quickly offer social personalization features, 2) Develop an unpaid army of advocates who can respond when you’re not there, and 3) Start to invest in systems –like social CRM– that can support their overall strategy.

Looking forward to sharing more on this topic as it develops during 2010, I’ve written more about this topic and the intention web.

Yesterday’spost on Social CRM vendors not walking-the-talk raised awareness of this nascent space. However not everyone was thrilled with the effort, as CTO John Moore gave us an A for effort but a C- for results, and Kim Kobza, the CEO of Neigborhood America (they were an early adopter) left a comment on John’s post suggesting we missed the mark. Although we stand by our scoring, both John and Kim are right, our evaluation yesterday was only on a small subset of the industry, but a manageable starting ground, as we continue to unearth the variety of players.

For a few years ago, I’ve created what I call my posts called the Industry Index (see all) lists to track companies in any particular vertical, it helps me, vendors, and buyers to track the space. I expect this space to rapidly increase in size as social channels will be bolted onto CRM vendors, and many brand monitoring and community platforms are adding workflow, triage, capabilities. The purpose of this list is to quickly capture the vendors participating in this space, and to acknowledge those that were not on yesterday’s review, I expect there to be many more vendors who leave a comment, which we can quickly add to this list.

We owe it to the market to try to include as many as possible, although it’s going to be very difficult as this space quickly grows. So first, let’s try to put some scope on the space. Let’s work together to create the first industry index on this emerging space, I’ll need your help.

“CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.” (also read his 2009 review of this space on ZDnet)

It’s a broad definition, but the key criteria he lists out are enough for me to go on, let’s start the index.

ACT!: This barely fits the scope of social crm, but ACT! allows a single individual to manage multiple types of information, including social, however if this product was extended across an enterprise, it fits the quota.

Gist: Offers a way to track the social behaviors of your customers and prioritize.

Xobni: This cleverly named (opposite of inbox) Outlook plugin scrapes your social graph and most frequently emailed contacts improving email utility. This barely falls within the scope of social crm, but if the data was able to export to other systems, it could start to apply.

CRM Applications

Appirio: Offers the ability for companies to create applications on Facebook which then marry data back to Salesforce, called Cloud Connectors.

Social Networks

Twitter: Has made motions they plan to offer premium services to brands, that would offer verified accounts, then management-like features. The specifics are still unknown, as they sort out their business model. They have partnered with Google and Bing.

Not on this list? Leave a comment, justification why you fit in Paul’s definition with a link to your site explaining more, I’ll take a look and add to it, please be patient while I review.

Surveying the Social CRM Industry
Business partner Ray Wang (focused on enterprise strategy) and myself (customer strategy) of the Altimeter Group is undergoing a major project for a client in the nascent Social CRM arena. We’re surveying the landscape to learn about a variety of vendors in the space, their capabilities and deployments. A small portion of our survey is to see who’s eating their own dog food, and truly demonstrating they understand the ’social’ aspect of social crm and living it.

Companies Who Sell Social Products Should Demonstrate Credibility By Living It
While critics may be quick to dismiss the mere inclusions of a blog or community to a product landing page, the message goes much deeper. Social CRM isn’t just about bolting on a new plugin to your system like a new air foil on your minivan but instead a new way of doing business. The promise of social crm says that companies are truly listening to their customers wherever they are, responding, anticipating, and making the commitment to improve products and services. Vendors that are assisting brands with this promise to the market need to demonstrate they fully understand the ramifications of social crm –not just a keyword checklist of the buzzword du jour.

Criteria: How We Graded the Social CRM Vendors
There are four major areas of grading, from very tactical ability to 1) Simple sharing of social content from the corporate product page 2) Surfacing a developer or business community, and a look inside of the discussions in each community, with bonus points for integration with product page. 3) Thought leadership with relevant blogs on the subject, and a gauge of their level of interaction and any twitter accounts they may have. 4) A subjective look at the overall page experience in the context of a company that’s offering a ’social experience’.

Findings: Overall, Social CRM Vendors Aren’t Walking the TalkWe’ve decided to make our findings public, at least for this part of our client deliverable to see how different vendors that are in the Social CRM space are walking the talk.

Sharing Features on Product Page (out of 1 point)

Community and Integration (out of 1 point)

Thought Leadership: Blogs, Twitter (out of 1 point)

Overall Social Experience (out of 1 point)

Final Score (out of 4 points)

Salesforce

0

0

0

.25

.25/4

Microsoft Dynamic

0

0

0

.5

.5/4

SAP CRM

.5

0

0

0

.5/4

Jive (Community Platform)

0

0

.5

.5

1.0/4

Oracle/Siebel Social CRM

0

.5

.5

0

1.0/4

RightNow CRM

1

0

.5

0

1.5/4

Lithium (Community Platform)*

.75

.75

.75

0

2.25/4

To pass, companies need to receive greater than a .5 in each category for a total score of 2.0 plus making Lithium the only vendor to pass.

Highlights From Study
The product pages are devoid of true social interaction, and none of them actually surface discussions about how the market is even talking about them. Marketing machine Salesforce demonstrated they aren’t engaging in a social experience on their own product pages and SAP and Microsoft’s typical enterprise looking design stayed consistent with ‘boring’ social experiences. Although Oracle’s bland web experience looks like it’s designed for the media-phobes, there is links to community and thought leadership blogs. Despite the overall meager findings, there were a few social hopefuls such as Lithium (Altimeter client*) who integrated social throughout the experience followed by RightNow Technologies who demonstrated thought leadership through executive blogs. Honorable mention to Jive engaging online video that captures the spirit of the Social CRM movement. We know that soon every webpage will be social, even if you don’t choose for it to be, so companies should enable features that allow websites to have conversations. Social CRM vendors that want to demonstrate to the market they are experts at this space should gear up to demonstrate they’ve the ability to do as they preach –as for now, it doesn’t show.

*Altimeter Client. At the Altimeter Group we practice open leadership (also the topic of Charlene’s upcoming book) and disclose our relationships with clients, given their permission. We hope you will trust us more if we do.

Things started slow
I remember when people would go to conferences, take notes, then share them a few hours or days later. Then in 2005-2006 I noticed people started to live blog sessions, anxious readers would refresh as the page was updated in real time –sometimes with photos. Fast forward to Dec 2006, Twitter emerges to the early adopters and people begin to share in real-time. Plurk, Jaiku, and then Facebook status updates emerge, followed by the enterprise vendors like SocialText, it’s not just a product, status updates are now a feature.

[The Intention Web: A Published, Anticipated Goal.]

When Real Time Is Not Fast Enough: The Intention Web
I’ll be presenting at Europe’s largest tech conference, LeWeb next week. My topic? When Real-Time Isn’t Fast Enough: The Future Of the Web (I’ll publish slides, later). In particular, with event planning features, like Facebook events, upcoming.org, we’re starting to see people make explicity public remarks on what they want to do, when, and with who. Welcome plancast.com a startup by Mark Hendrickson formerly of Techcrunch who created this simple website that allows people to broadcast what they plan to do next using Twitter or Facebook.

Much of today’s information is related to real time events, people want to share their thoughts and experiences, this is quickly getting outdated as social features empower real time conversations appear, regardless.

Real-Time Web

Information published as it happens, often, content is consumed in real time, with the reader also broadcasting back, resulting in synchronous communication. Examples: Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook Status updates.

Consumers can give instant feedback about their needs. Companies can respond to the immediate needs of customers.

Excessive noise from everyone publishing their status. Companies unable to sort through noise, prioritize, and react. This problem to compound over time.

Intention Web

Information that provides explicit predictions of who will do what next, although it’s not happened yet. Examples: Upcoming.org, Facebook events, Plancast.

People can connect to each other, improving experience. Businesses can provide a more contextualized experience for customers or prospects using Social CRM

Explicit intentions may not be true, the future is always uncertain. Companies can barely keep up with real time web –let alone predict the future.

Intention Web Provides People and Companies Opportunities
Some may call this the, anticipation web, intention web, or forward looking web, but regardless of the name, there are some unique opportunities: 1) People can now use their social relationships that have similar goals or events on their cal and improve their experience. 2) They can also identify who in their social circles are most likely going where, increasing their knowledge of top events. 3) This provides businesses with the ability to listen to provide highly contextualized offerings and experiences for those explicitly stating their intents. Once a listening strategy is developed, expect Social CRM to be in the foreground mining, organizing, and making this data actionable.

Yet Barriers Will Challenge Consumers and Companies
Yet the intent based web is also fraught with challenges for both people and companies. 1) Status updates are still getting traction. Twitter has the media hype, but not yet the mainstream adoption, so you can’t expect the social behaviors of everyone to broadcast their future intents. 2) For those that do broadcast their intent, should be concerned about privacy and personal security. 3) The future is always uncertain, a great degree of intention data will be inaccurate. 4) Most companies can’t even keep up with the asynchronous web, let alone the real-time web, and certainly not the intent based web.

Intention Web Will Provide Consumers With Contextualized Experiences
Expect the real-time web to quickly evolve into the intention web. People will work together to share their information about what they plan to do, and improve how they work or organize. Expect Social CRM systems (Salesforce, SAP), Brand Monitoring vendors (Radian6, Visible Technologies), and Search Engines (Bing and Google) to quickly try to make predictive models on what could happen, and what are the chances. Businesses that have a physical location like retail, events, or packaged goods can use this data to anticipate consumer demand. They may offer contextualized marketing, or increase or decrease inventory or store hours to accommodate. Don’t be surprised in the future and you walk into a store with your preferred items, meal, or drink already nicely packaged for you.

Jeremiah: The Web Strategy Blog isn’t just about me, but the overall community. One of the key members of the team is Mitch Canter, my web designer, and the guy who keeps my blog and all the features up and running. I aim to implement many of the social technologies that I cover. It helps me to learn, stay current, and understand the limitations and benefits of the tools, which I pass on to you and my clients. The following is a guest post from Mitch of StudioNashVegas, about a few updates (based on your feedback) we’ve made this past week:

Mitch: Hey everyone, it’s your friendly neighborhood WordPress guy Mitch Canter again! I’ve been doing some work to Jeremiah’s site in the last few days, so if you’ve seen any strange goings-on, that’s what it was. Just to give you a quick update:

I’ve updated Jeremiah’s commenting system to DISQUS. There were a number of different options I could have chosen from, but I use DISQUS on my own personal site, and have had zero problems with it. The goal is to make commenting more interactive and more conversation-like (which is what Jeremiah’s blog is all about, anyway). Now, you can reply to specific comments and see the progression. This will also separate comments, trackbacks, and social media reactions for easy viewing.

The “People on the Move” graphic is getting got an overhaul. Something that goes a little more with the site, and yet sticks out for quick scanning in long content blocks.

The static pages have been updated – Jeremiah’s doing a lot of new stuff, so we have to find a nice home for it on his blog. The pages Speaking and Media have been added in the navigation at the top of the page. Check them out – he’s got lots of great stuff to share!

Other smaller CSS / design fixes have been implemented to tighten up the design and make it look as nice as it can (the biggest one being the increased font size).

So, at any rate, I hope you like the changes and the new commenting system (leave your comments on it below and revel in the irony!). As always any feedback is appreciated. You can send it directly to me at mitch@studionashvegas.com – I will hopefully get back to you as soon as I can!